One of my favorite books is How Proust Can Change Your LIfe. It is less than two hundred pages, but jam packed with wonderful insights. The author is an engaging and winsome writer. And he is an atheist. His view of the world is much different than mine, but he has a terrific way of explaining important matters.
Here is a two minute clip of the author explaining what great literature can do:
I liked the speaker’s insights into the different perspectives a writer brings into his observations. This has implications on how we read the four gospel accounts in which the same events are viewed through different eyes.
The title of the book, however, leaves me personally cold since I struggled through the seven volumes of Remembrance of Things Past over a two-year period and can honestly say I gained nothing from the experience. But perhaps that’s my problem, not Proust’s.
Hey Dave,
You were on my very short list of likely people to have read all of Proust. I have thought about it, but not got past the thought. Plus, I still have much of Shakespeare, etc. to read so it seems not to fit.
For one who read all of Proust at least nine times is here. Go to 13:13 and watch for about a minute. Pretty amazing. The whole interview is quite good.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/110450
Thanks for guiding me to that interview. I would hate to argue with as good an author as Shelby Foote, but my conclusion is that Proust is perhaps a writer’s writer more than a reader’s writer.